Immigration provides opportunity for a much-need GOP makeover

After a significant majority of Latino voters favored the president and his policies over the fare that the GOP was offering, there seems to have been a change in the attitudes among some of the Republican faithful. Some of them are looking at their tarnished brand and realizing the need for a makeover. After all, despite the fact that the nation considered dating Mitt Romney, a four-year relationship was just out of the question.

Despite some Republican voices who wanted to make the current beau in the White House a one-term fling, other Republicans realize that many people, including Latinos, do not want to come to their party. Some have started to reach across the aisle.

One progressive and long overdue example of this new hand holding is the recently proposed, bipartisan legislation to start an overhaul of the U.S. immigration system.

Good job, Republicans! This is a decent first step to try and stop your downward spiral into irrelevancy.

Immigration reform is not only important to Latinos, it is important to the nation. Hopefully, the country will continue to flourish and call to those seeking to improve their lives and to contribute to the fantastic democratic experiment that is the United States. To this end, smile and embrace, Republicanos! Time to stop covering your eyes. Perhaps it has dawned on you that the undocumented people here are too many to lock up and too many, too scattered and too expensive to deport.

Relax. You like being heroes, correct? Think of all the corridas that will be written about how the Republicanos became the friend to the pueblo. Think of how many parents, newly documented, will nurse their babes with the gentle murmur, “The GOP did this.” I can see the next wave of registered Republicans, all happily sitting in their strollers right now.

You have also come to the conclusion that it seems unproductive to educate immigrants, award them advanced degrees, then send them back to other countries. It did not take you long to figure out that keeping the brainpower here may actually benefit all of us. You may even get the opportunity to slap each other on the back while pointing to the next naturalized Nobel Prize winner in physics and proclaim, “We gave her that green card!”

You have wisely decided that it is best to discourage future illegal immigration by making sure that an employment verification system is in place. It might be worthwhile to have a talk with those within the party who have previously been forgetful about this employment verification business. We wouldn’t want to be caught with our undocumented nannies and landscapers out in the open.

And you have come to embrace the idea of importing more low-skilled laborers. Unless droves of U.S. citizens start clamoring for those coveted back-breaking jobs, someone is going to have to pick your fresh fruits and vegetables.

Matri was born in Guatemala City and emigrated to the U.S. with her parents when she was a toddler. Her childhood years were spent in Washington D.C. She was fortunate to have been aided and encouraged to apply to a great school in Virginia by a teacher who saw a spark in her when she taught her in the DC public school system. Maitri was disadvantaged in that she then became the only Latina in her class for many years. When it came time to go to college, she left for New York City, the place of her childhood dreams, to attend Barnard College, Columbia University. She graduated with a degree in Foreign Area Studies, with a concentration in Latin America. When she finally realized what she wanted to do professionally, she enrolled in three extra years of undergraduate coursework in order to fulfill the requirements for application to veterinary medical school. She graduated from the Virginia-Maryland Regional College of Veterinary Medicine with a degree of Doctor of Veterinary Medicine.

In addition to her professional life, a life she finds not only rewarding but constantly challenging, Maitri is a wife and a mother of three young children. She is an activist, interested in furthering knowledge, participating and directly involving herself in the areas of human and non human animal rights and environmentalism. She tries to engage in the world around her to influence it as much as she can to help secure a healthy, peaceful living environment for her children and all other living beings on the planet. She is a benevolent misanthrope, a polyglot, a lover of travel. She has wild plans of obtaining a law degree when her children are older. She is currently practicing emergency medicine and volunteers her services wherever they are needed.

Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the author and should not be understood to be shared by Being Latino, Inc.